Create bending joints—but don't break! The activity shows how to make a puppet using straws and fishing line. Pupils create cuts to make joints that rely on the elasticity of the straw to bend and return to their original shapes.

Expand your knowledge of exponents with an activity that promotes critical thinking and comparison skills. Middle and high schoolers compare numbers written in expanded and exponential form and explain their strategies for solving...

As a class, scholars read the poems, Humpty Dumpty, Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater, and Jack and Jill, in order to identify words with the same ending sound. Using their rhyming skills, learners brainstorm additional words...

Third graders investigate the balance of ecosystems and how each species has different survival needs. They research on the internet using the site included. They then participate in activities/centers utilizing the facts they discovered.

Who doesn't love a word search? Young learners familiar with the past tense of common irregular verbs (like eat, has, and think) will love this activity! First they have to find the past tense of the target verbs. Then, after checking...

Do your writers have the writing bug? Give them this short prompt as today's writing activity. They have to decide how they'd spend $100,000, but they can't spend it on themselves! There's also a rectangular box at the bottom of the...

Learners participate in a series of demonstrations about Bernoulli's principle. They explain how air pressure varies with air speed. They write a detailed lab report about the activity. This is a great way to explore this concept.

If you are teaching metaphors in your language arts class, consider using this presentation to illustrate several examples of classic metaphors. Body metaphors, war metaphors, and comic metaphors all help learners understand the...

Why do some places in the world have more people living there than other places? Learn about the ways the countries have formed around natural resources with a reading comprehension activity. After kids read a short...

Show your class a colorful and eye-catching overview of Nathaniel Hawthorne's life. His somewhat dark and tragic works make more sense once the reader is enlightened as to his history and habits. This brief but intriguing presentation...

Here’s a clever way to combine language arts and social studies. Shakespeare’s The Tempest is believed to have been inspired by the wreck of the Sea Venture on Bermuda in 1609. The class views a brief scene from Castaway in which Tom...

Readers of Ordinary People employ a cubing strategy based on Bloom’s Taxonomy to analyze, from multiple perspectives, an excerpt from Chapter 10 of Judith Guest’s novel.  The excerpt, a rationale and complete directions for the...

Build the writing skills of your junior high wordsmiths with activities that introduce many essential skills of writing.  As a class, they develop working definitions of formal vs. informal writing, explore different categories of...

Streets and alleys is a cat and mouse game wherein the cat is chasing and trying to capture the mouse. The fun part of this game is that the streets can turn in to alleys and the alleys can turn in to streets. This can be at times...

This, the fourth in a series of ten poetry writing activities, asks young poets to craft couplets.

Keep the conversation going with a social skills activity. Designed for learners with autism, the lesson guides peers through the back-and-forth of a conversation, encouraging them to wait their turn before responding.

Everything has potential energy; learning to use it is the key to understanding all types of energy. Scholars learn the difference between kinetic and potential energy. They then apply the concept to drawing examples of both types...

Scholars examine an animated picture to locate stars that, when chosen, provide a brief scenario, question, and answer. With each answer, a letter appears that later reveals a word.

Here is a lesson plan in which pupils connect themes and rules to live by from the story Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis to those found in the poem If by Rudyard Kipling. First, scholars discuss their reading and review Bud's...

Students practice tossing, catching, and balancing in a fun, theme-based setting.

Students fill in a probability chart while attempting to catch candy with their non-dominant hands. They replicate the activity with a coin.

Students practice throwing and catching in teams while learning about rebound angles.

Students practice catching and throwing while being defended and defending areas of a field.

Students practice throwing and catching skills with plastic grocery bags.